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DESIGNING EDUCATION SITUATIONS THAT USE

DIGITAL RESOURCES AND ONLINE APPLICATIONS

PROIECTAREA SITUAȚIILOR EDUCAȚIONALE CARE UTILIZEAZĂ RESURSE DIGITALE ȘI APLICAȚII ONLINE

Olimpius ISTRATE

Journal of Pedagogy, 2018 (2), 45 - 55

https://doi.org/10.26755/RevPed/2018.2/45

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Revista de Pedagogie/ Journal of Pedagogy • 2018 (2) • LXVI 45

DESIGNING EDUCATION SITUATIONS THATUSE DIGITAL RESOURCES AND ONLINE

APPLICATIONS

Olimpius Istrate*University of Bucharest,

Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences,Bucharest, Romania

[email protected]

AbstractEven if we have educational software, digital resources, online applications, or avirtual learning platform, learning activities planning is not easier or less accurate.Learning and assessment need to be designed even more closely and better tied tolearning objectives, to avoid distractors, to fit on the time available, to maximize thepotential of digital support to increase the participation of all students, to complementclassroom learning with learning activities at home (flipped classroom).In the context of the “conventional” instructional design, centreed on the calibrationof the finalities and methods based on content, theme, audience and availableresources, the article presents several models of organising learning originally builtto support the design of digital educational games (Quinn, 2005), which can be usedto understand how we can transform a didactic activity into an attractive educationsituation, similar to ludic activities, especially when we can integrate newtechnologies. We present a selection of three models - mini-scenarios, chainedscenarios, conditional scenarios - progressively ordered according to their abilityto increase engagement and attractiveness of learning activities.

Keywords: Digital educational resources, instructional design, online applications.

RezumatChiar şi atunci când avem la dispoziţie software educaţional, resurse digitale,aplicaţii online sau o platformă educaţională virtuală, planificarea activităţilorde învăţare nu este mai simplă sau mai puţin precisă. Activităţile de învăţare şievaluarea trebuie gândite chiar cu mai mare atenţie şi corelate mai bine cu

Revista de Pedagogie - Journal of Pedagogy, 2018 (2), 45– 55https://doi.org/10.26755/RevPed/2018.2/45

* Associate Professor, PhD., University of Bucharest, Faculty of Psychology andEducation Sciences, Bucharest, Romania.

obiectivele învăţării, pentru evitarea distractorilor, pentru încadrarea în timp,pentru utilizarea la maxim a potenţialului suportului digital în creştereaparticipării tuturor elevilor, pentru complementarizarea învăţării din clasă cuactivităţi de învăţare realizate acasă (flipped classroom).În contextul designului „convenţional” al instruirii, centrat pe calibrareafinalităţilor şi metodelor în funcţie de conţinuturi, tematică, audienţă şi resursedisponibile, articolul prezintă câteva modele de organizare a activităţilor deînvăţare, construite iniţial pentru a susţine designul jocurilor educaţionale digitale(Quinn, 2005), care pot fi utilizate pentru a înţelege cum putem transforma oactivitate didactică într-un moment atractiv, similar activităţilor ludice, în specialîn condiţiile integrării noilor tehnologii. Prezentăm o selecţie de trei modele –mini-scenarii, scenarii înlănţuite, scenarii condiţionate – ordonate progresiv înfuncţie de capacitatea lor de a creşte angajamentul şi atractivitatea activităţilorde învăţare.

Cuvinte-cheie: Aplicaţii online, design instrucţional, resurse educaţionaledigitale.

1. Introduction

Two benchmarks are commonly used to assess the quality of an educator’swork, students’ performance and participation in the proposed learningactivities. Performance (or improvement) is interdependent with participationto a great extent: it is more likely that a good performer is actively involvedin activities and it is expected that a student who is attentive and active tolearn better. Students’ participation in learning activities is not achieved byforcing them to pay attention or by asking them to understand the ultimategoal of learning and the potential value of the information we present (althoughthey also have their role at higher school levels in other). Exclusive use ofthis tactic in education is counterproductive, leading to the association ofschool learning with monotony, boredom, frustration, anxiety (Macklem,2015).

The challenge for teachers is to prepare exciting activities in order to attractstudents into learning – but it is obvious that, in most cases, one (the same)activity does not meet the interests and needs of all students in a class, norit is in the zone of proximal development of each of them. That is why we

46 STUDII TEORETICE

can use two ways to optimize teaching activities, which can be combinedinto practice: designing differentiated activities, by group levels, by group of interest,

by group of potential (and mixed, where possible); designing learning activities that are sufficiently complex for each student

to find a (interesting) pathway.

Ensuring optimum learning conditions for class and student is a complexprocess that cannot be achieved without a plan; most of the times, the“project” is a mental sketch of the sequence of activities to be deployedduring a lesson, given the role of each activity, the resources available andthe logical chaining of learning contents.

The need to design teaching activities appears as evident in contrast to apreconceived notion that if we give the student access to information wehave also provided his/ her learning. There is a major difference betweenaccess to information and access to learning, and the role of a teacher is tofacilitate learning rather than just providing (access to) information. That iswhy the teaching has to be multiplied on the way in which the learning willbe done, giving beforehand the answer to a series of questions like: for whom / with whom do I do the learning activity? where and with

what resources do I do it? within what time frame? what is the content of learning? what is the purpose/ learning objectives for which they do the activity? how can I develop the education situation and why do I do it in a certain

way and not in another? how do I know if and to what extent learning objectives have been

achieved?

The new technologies are coming to complete and intensify educationalsituations, placing themselves in the zone of external conditions for learning.In digital environment, class-group dynamics may be different from howstudents respond and interact in conventional contexts. Group structure andclassroom relationships are partially changed on the basis of the digitalcompetence of each student – often, shy students or students who are not“rated” as being the best can find new learning activities using newtechnologies, new benchmarks and new ways of expression, more familiar


and facilitating their school progress. Therefore, teachers can view ICT-enabled teaching activities as opportunities to stimulate the progressof certain learners, to bring (some of) them closer to the knowledge domain,and to strengthen class cohesion.

In addition, the time available for the learning unit and the possibility to developactivities in the computer lab, in the school yard, or in the museum isconditioning the choice of methods, assignment of time per each task, theway teachers formulate learning objectives and, implicitly, the assessmentways. A better design of education situations, by using a variety of instructionalmethods and strategies, by including the tools and resources available at themoment, constitutes the premise for better development of didactic activities,resulting in a better participation of students in activities and higher schoolperformance.

2. Universal design for learning

With its roots in neurocognitive science, the concept of “universal design forlearning” (UDL) slowly infiltrate in education. Conscious of the unique natureof each student, instead of imposing a solution for all class students, weshould offer diverse learning experiences that fit each one, maximizingchances of progress.

The purpose of the universal design is to design a learning activity in order to: provide multiple ways of representing the content, mainly referring to

the multiplication of the formats in which information is accessible (visual,auditory, kinaesthetic), but also to the degree of difficulty, logical successionor complexity, giving the student the opportunity to choose the way ofpresentation or the route that suits it more to decode the message;

provide multiple modes of action and expression: various types ofstudent interaction with the content of learning and alternative possibilitiesto demonstrate that he/ she has learned;

provide multiple ways of participation, in order to motivate, supporttheir interest and engage as many students as possible – throughinteractivity, relevance of proposed scenarios, real life connections,gamification, dynamism.

48 STUDII TEORETICE

Specifically, the universal design proposes to think about activities that reallyhelp students in a specific class to go through the learning content wepropose: always prepare a visual support (cardboard, cards or digital media) for

the presentations we do; integrate, as much as possible, short relevant videos, educational software,

interactive lesson sequences, group exercises etc. – both in what we call‘teaching activity’ and in learning and assessment activities;

vary the didactic strategy and change the approach we use the mostoften, by conducting more lessons on the inductive strategy, in the lab orin the school yard, dividing students into equal or mixed groups, etc.;

assess the student not only in “conventional” situations and at the end, byaccounting the way he/she works, by appraising various products of theactivities (whether digital, online), changing the format of the test, takinginto account the assessments of his colleagues or the significance of hiscontribution in a working group, etc.;

always keep in mind students’ motivation and engagement – if we manageto make them participate voluntarily, we have designed and developed agood lesson.

Universal design is particularly suited to computer-assisted learning, beingactually a concept inspired and propelled by the opportunities that newtechnologies bring to education. Leaving behind the idea of prescribed content,going beyond the times when teaching resources and support materials werescarce, we now have a variety of (complementary) resources – onlineapplications, educational software, digital resources in any field of knowledge,virtual platforms and so on – that we can easily bring into the classroom,offering students the alternative that is closest to them and more plausible interms of their level, potential and expectations.

3. Designing participatory and engaging learning

In almost every sequence, learning can and should be an enjoyable activityfor students, rewarding their effort with the satisfaction of succeeding,achieving a stated goal, self-indulgence, participating with colleagues andteachers. The main ingredients are curiosity, play and participation. As regards


the teacher, designing attractive learning activities supposes availability andopenness, student knowledge, pedagogical tools, creativity and much work.To these, another essential component is added: the available instructionalresources. Today’s teaching material is ubiquitous – activity ideas, learningplatforms and information in various formats (text, image, audio, video) canbe found on the Internet, at any discipline and at any level of study. Thereare many studies showing the benefits of using digital resources to increasestudent motivation and attention, facilitate understanding, increase therelevance of learning content, etc. (Istrate, 2010). At the same time, wemust not ignore the value of the conventional activities, for some expectedlearning outcomes and for some learning content units.

With or without digital resources in learning activities, the design of educationalsituations is difficult, and the design of quality education situations involves adouble effort, in which elements of traditional pedagogy combine with thoseassociated with active participation, often through play, to activities thatengage all students (or each student). An explanatory model for the set ofinstructional design elements that we have to consider make a correlationbetween the “learning” and the “fun” part (Quinn, 2005), thus building anuseful tool for designing participatory educational activities in a ludic form.

50 STUDII TEORETICE

Table no. 1. Milestones for participatory and engaging instructional design

Learningconditions

Conditions forattractive and

engaging activity

Synergy, implications, explanations

Contextualisation Thematic coherence 1. Theme: Participatory activity must have acontext, a theme, a “story” – it is possible to usecharacters and situations known to all students,e.g. Wild West, dinosaur age, NASA, trip on theMoon, group expedition, celebrities in music,politics, science, etc. Even the feedback needs tobe grafted on the chosen topic, as a dialogue,appreciation or advice in that context.

Preciseobjectives

Precise purpose 2. Purpose: The goal must be clear and madeknown from the beginning, so that the studentcan make informed choices throughout thecourse. It is the motivation for action and givesthe measure of progress. Ideally, the goal shouldbe naturally integrated into the context/ theme ofthe activity.


Learningconditions


engaging activity


Adequatechallenge

Balanced challenge 3. Challenge: An engaging experience musthave a proper challenge against student's age orinterest horizon, appropriate to the level ofknowledge in the field – it must suit his/ her zoneof proximal development. It should also result ina succession of balanced and weighted tasks aslevel of difficulty (from simple, beginner levels,to complex, advanced levels) to adequatelyaccompany student's progress.

Anchored in thestudy subject

Relevance of action forthe domain

4. Link between action and disciplinarycontent: Situations of the activity scenariosshould require application of knowledge andexercise of the capacities targeted by the learningobjectives.

Relevance Relevance of theproblem for the learner

5. Connection between the proposed problem/situation and the learner: Another criterion forthe choice of the theme is the connection with theinterests of the student (or of the class group) – he/ shecan react better to certain emotional and motivationalfactors, to certain cognitive approaches, to competitiveor collaborative tasks, etc. In addition, if you knowhis/her problem-solving style, what preconceivedprejudices or ideas he/she has, you can betterdesign your activity’s tasks, or you can detectalong the way the source of potential mistakes.

Open/ freecharacteristic.Possibilities forexploring further

Choices of the courseof the action

6. Activism: An effective learning activity offerspossibilities of (cognitive) interaction with thecontent of learning and of construction of ownunderstanding based on this interaction. Thestudent must be active in making decisions, andthe scenario must contain enough ramificationsto keep him engaged in activity.

Active handling Direct handing 7. Direct interaction: It is preferable that thestudent is able to act (physically) on therepresentations of learning contents. In aconventional situation, for example, it is better toprovide cards with descriptions of options than tobe presented orally. Clicking, scrolling a list,pressing a key, turning an explanation card,starting a simulation and stopping it whenneeded – these are as well elements of theunmediated interaction.

We can say that new technologies offer the opportunity to develop aparticipatory and engaging learning path by creating and joining various typesof interactive resources for a learning situation. But the presented modelgives us an insight into the key points of how the design of a learning pathwayassisted by ICT is effectively being carried out and, not less importantly,suggests how it should NOT be a virtual learning scenario. Various constraintsand conditions applicable to “conventional” teaching and learning activities,conducted face-to-face with students, are amplified in the context ofcomputer-assisted education.

Adapted by: Quinn, 2005

52 STUDII TEORETICE

Learningconditions


engaging activity


Appropriatefeedback

Association 8. Feedback: Any decision has a consequencewith a certain significance for the learning path.The consequences of the choices must bepresented, preferably embedded in the play/ activityscenario, on that choice branch, until a newdecision is being made, so that the student buildshis/ her own understanding on the undertakensequence. “The story” takes priority – the studentdoes not have to be “pulled out” from thescenario, because the activity would lose itsimmersive, engaging attribute – a character(verbal feedback) or a situation in the samethematic context has to provide feedback. Incomplex scenarios, feedback can occur later,after the student has made other related decisionsthat converge to a consequence.

Gaining attention New information andevents

9. Affect: Each sequence of the scenario must beunpredictable to the greatest extent possible.From time to time, the choices can be made “bychance” by the learner, the information availablefor decisions not being complete or sufficientlystructured – therefore the learning path becomesmore interesting, dramatic, de-stressed and at thesame time providing chances to all students toachieve the didactic goal at the same time.In addition, especially with respect to digitalmaterials, special attention is needed to visualand auditory elements of context: colours used,fonts, addressing mode, sound effects must notbe distractors, but must be in tune with thechosen theme and scenario, to strengthen themessage and to contribute to the feeling ofrealism.

4. Final considerations

Integration of ICT tools into teaching brings a number of benefits, includingincreasing motivation for learning, increased access to information presentedin various forms, facilitating understanding, more possibilities for application(direct or mediated) and potential to achieve, to a greater extent, engaging,participative, collaborative learning activities, based on the interest andcapacities of each student (Istrate, 2010). However, the experience of thelast decades shows that, in practice, the advantages of using new technologiesdo not have the desired extent, and although intuited, they are not (adequately)aligned with the goals of a ICT-based educational situation (Velea, 2011).

The “new” technologies will become, over time, part of the conditions inwhich learning takes place in and out of school, surpassing the stage ofbeing novel, surprising and attractive in itself, taking its place of a naturalsupport that favours learning. For the time being, it seems that digital toolsand resources contribute to revitalizing the education science and to anchoringit in teaching practice. In instructional design, teachers have to make moreoften connections with the pedagogical repertoire, due to the fact that, inorder to motivate and engage, they integrate into the educational situation anumber of elements such as films, educational software, visual media(multimedia) for presentations they hold, virtual labs, virtual visits to museums,etc. (Noveanu & Istrate, 2005). These must be placed in a (new) pedagogicalapproach: they must be meaningful in the perspective of the precise rolethat justifies their use in a particular moment of the lesson, they must besubsumed to a strategy (which they often determine), they must contributeto improving the learning outcomes of the study discipline.

In essence, it is about the pedagogical foundation of the didactic approach,with or without new technologies. An engaging, attractive, motivating learningactivity is an activity that has been, above all, well designed. Even moretoday, in the front of the “native digital” students, a good design of educationalsituations is an essential condition for a better implementation and developmentof learning activities, resulting in a wider participation of students to activitiesand in better school performance. The conceptual platform offered by the“universal design for learning” and the inspiration from the “mechanisms”and routes proposed by the digital applications or games are strengths,


prerequisites and (already) certainties of a substantive transformation of theeducation process.

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